


love, love, in a trashcan

by goodboots



Series: on the run [1]
Category: Jessica Jones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dubious Consent, F/M, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Jessica Kilgrave Hero Team, Stockholm Syndrome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-07
Updated: 2016-01-07
Packaged: 2018-05-12 08:01:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5658763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goodboots/pseuds/goodboots
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"And what happens in six months?" he finally asks. "Worst case scenario, I mean."</p><p>She shrugs. "You kept me that long, against my will, so we'll call it even. We both walk away and you never come near me and mine again."</p><p>"Really?" he says, incredulous.</p><p>"Of course not. I'm going to kill you."</p>
            </blockquote>





	love, love, in a trashcan

**Author's Note:**

> All our faves are problematic, but this is just going to be upsetting for a lot of readers. I'm telling you right now, if you read the description and thought "maybe this isn't for me," it definitely isn't. If you think you shouldn't read it, you're right. Turn back now: this shit is fucked up. If you want a detailed content warning, jump to the endnotes.
> 
> Title cribbed from the Raveonettes, with apologies.

She returns from her "walk," which in point of fact included a final trip back to her apartment to pick up the rest of the worldly goods that she actually plans on hanging on to (currently shoved into a duffel bag slung over her back) and a weird teary goodbye with Trish at her penthouse, after about seven hours gone. She stands in the driveway of her childhood home feeling strangely like she's sneaking back in after curfew.

Kilgrave is waiting for her, typically, slouched in the living room with all the lights turned off, scowling. He brightens somewhat at her return, though not as much as the servants, who are ecstatically glad to see her. She doesn't want to even imagine what'd he'd threatened them with if she didn't come back.

"Peace offering," she announces, holding up the two carrier bags of Chinese takeout.

She's late becaue she went back to his favourite takeout place, and makes a point of telling him so as she unpacks their dinner.

"That's not the only place you went," he notes, glowering.

She fails to hold back her sigh. "Can we do food first, then talking? We haven't eaten all day."

The _we_ brings him up short, lumping them both in together, but he nods, and she exhales. It's going according to plan so far. She just has to keep collecting enough of these tentative agreements from him.

"Here," she brings in plates from the kitchen and hands them to him, careful not to graze his skin with hers, "set the table."

It's a blatant test, and he must know it, but he just raises one eyebrow and starts laying out two place settings while she tells the staff they have the rest of the night off, and they should probably enjoy it outside of the house.

She sits across from Kilgrave in her old dining room, and they eat in silence, though he only drinks the wine and waits until she's ingested a little something from every carton before digging in himself.

An hour later, after what has to be the weirdest, most formal tense silent Jessica has ever experienced (and she lived in the same house as Dorothy Walker for four years), she clears her throat and says, "I changed my mind. I'll stay."

His expression is somewhere between wary and unconvinced, but he doesn't say anything.

"I have conditions. You have to promise you won't force me."

"I've already done that," he says, self-congratulatory. "Once you get over this--trauma of yours, we'll make a wonderful team. Oh, I know it hurt you," he says, abruptly compassionate (she can never tell which way his mood is going to swing), "it was awful, what happened to Reva. We're neither of us made to be killers, but we fit together. You're the only person in the world, who can match me. You'll see, you'll feel it just as I do."

And he means it, is the worst part. She had thought, had convinced herself, that he was a psychopath, bent on destroying her mind. That he wanted her dead, was trying to get her to kill herself, and end this fucked up cat-and-mouse dance: but no. He means it. He loves her. He doesn't know what love is, and yeah, she has just the tiniest little bit of--empathy? No, pity--she pities him, and his fucked up childhood and twisted parents. Kilgrave's power has him so warped that he doesn't even know what love is.

"You'll see, Jessica," he concludes, and she knows what she has to tell him.

"I want to," she says earnestly, and draws up the advice of every overpaid acting coach she ever witnessed Patsy Walker suffering through, and tries to mean it. She lowers her voice and tilts her head down, lets her eyelashes flutter a litte as she says, "I want to see the good in you. I saw it today and it scared me, a little."

"Why?" he demands.

"Because you hurt me so badly, and I don't know what kind of monster I'll become if I let myself like you." She stops short, letting the annoyance show on her face. It was a good line, she thought. She came up with it on the cab ride over. "You _made_ me tell you that; I didn't say it on purpose."

"Sorry, sorry," he says, dismissive.

She's got him snared now, she can see it. He's in love with the idea that this could still come out all right for him; he's not going to back down if she escalates the stakes a little.

"I can't commit to forever," she warbles. "I don't know for sure what we'll be like together, maybe there isn't enough for us to do."

He waves her concern away.

"Believe me, I've seen enough of it to know that this world is a mess."

"Even so," she allows, "I want a trial run. Six months, you and me, just like we did today. Helping people. I need to know if you can live like that."

He reaches across the table, and she thinks of a moment he's going to take her hand; she wills herself to hold still, appear relaxed and unafraid, but he only seizes her wine glass. His eyes stay on hers as he drains the rest of it.

She's rarely seen him drink. He likes to be in control.

"And what happens in six months?" he finally asks. "Worst case scenario, I mean."

She shrugs. "You kept me that long, against my will, so we'll call it even. We both walk away and you never come near me and mine again."

"Really?" he says, incredulous.

"Of course not. I'm going to kill you."

She says it with a smile, the kind he likes her to wear.

He leans back in his chair, watching her. "Nah, not you," he says, shaking his head after a too-long moment. "You're not a killer."

 _We'll see_ , she thinks, and pours more wine.

#

They talk past midnight, working out the details of her second captivity.

She has stipulations. "We have to leave the city."

"What, after I've put all this work into making a lovely home for you?"

There are a lot of things she could say to that, so she goes with the obvious. "This house is a parody of my childhood, and every minute I'm inside it my skin is crawling. You did it to get a rise out of me: congratulations, it worked. Beyond that, I don't trust you around my people, and if we stay here one of them will come across you sooner or later."

"You think I'm going to hurt Patsy or the junkie?"

She says nothing, only stares him down, and after a beat he cracks, eyes rolling heavenward.

"Fine, fine, fair enough. Jesus, you try to kill someone one time–"

"And you have to stop mentioning that. The whole–what happened before. I don't want to think about it, not if I'm going to be around you all the time."

Is that really what she was agreeing to, being with him 24/7? It was the safest way to keep the rest of the world out of his way, but still–a full six months in his presence? She fights down the wave of queasiness that rose in her throat at the thought; she can handle him if she has to, he'll stick to the deal so long as he thinks he has a chance at changing her mind about him.

Besides that, she's immune to his powers, and he hasn't figured that out yet. She's the only one safe to hold the leash.

"Our history," he starts, the word full in his mouth, leaning toward her over the kitchen counter.

"We don't have a history," she interjects, only half lying. Yes, she needs him to believe she's complacent and committed to this shitty idea, but she also doesn't want to think about the things he did to her. "As far as I'm concerned, this is Day One."

Kilgrave looks like he wants to argue the point, arms drawn up defensively over his chest, but he capitulates after a beat. "For six months, sure, I've lived with worse impositions before. I suppose I can deal with your rules. After all, I've told you what I think. We balance each other out. I think this was written in the stars."

She fake-gags, and he looks amused, the fucker.

"I want you with me, Jessica, but I want it to be real this time. If you want to make a fresh go of it, that's fine. I'm willing to take the chance that in a few months you might feel differently about me."

She has no answer for that except to stare silently at her hand on the countertop where he's laid his overtop. He's not touching her, not quite, but she can feel the heat from his palm ghosting along her skin. She shuts her eyes and tells him to go pack a bag, they're leaving this place in the morning.

#

Trish knows about Jessica's plan, told her it was stupid and dangerous, and gave her a tracking chip to keep in her wallet and three different credit cards, all under different names. She said she'd keep an eye on Hope's case for her, and tell her when it's time for them to come back.

Jessica is hoping that in a month, if everything goes well, she'll have enough evidence that Kilgrave exists that she can help Hope without either of them having to show up to the trial.

She sets the domestic staff free on the front lawn just after sunrise, making Kilgrave repeat after her exactly: "You're done here. All the orders I gave you no longer stand, and you don't have to do anything I say after this. But please don't tell anyone about this."

She has a plan for when they go public, and she doesn't need more victims coming forward, not it she's going to make this work.

"Well, that was melodramatic," he notes, watching Laurent and Alva flee the property. He hitches his bag higher on his shoulder, swivels his designer wheelie suitcase on the sidewalk before him. Prick. "Now, where to?"

They take an obscenely expensive taxi to a rental car place on Long Island, and Kilgrave negotiates for a car nobody's going to notice missing when they don't return it in a week. She can justify this abuse of his power--what does she care about a Ford Focus?

She tells him that she's driving, neglecting to mention that she does not have a license, and tells him to be quiet while she figures out the best route to Boston. The TV in the Rent-A-Car place was playing a news clip about a serial killer in Boston; it seems like a good place to start.

"I didn't agree to this so I could feel like your hostage," he comments, when she slaps his hand away from the radio.

"No, you agreed to it because you're insane."

"You've said that before," he half-turns in the passenger seat to look at her. "What gives you the impression that I'm not in full possession of all my faculties?"

She'd forgotten little details since his supposed death; the fact that he even talks like a prick is one of them.

"You tried to make the rental car guy stab himself in the eye with the keys."

He shrugs. "Force of habit. I wanted the Porsche, is that so wrong?"

"Yes," she restrains herself from gripping the steering wheel too hard. She knows from experience that she could wrench it right off. "Fine, you're not insane, and you're not stupid either. I know you know the difference between right and wrong. If this is gonna work, you're gonna have to abide by basic, fucking common sense humankind rules, OK?"

"Just what do you want me to agree to?"

Yeah, she's gonna have to spell out the rules of common decency.

"No compelling people to go against their own self interest. No sadistic punishments when people piss you off. No murder, or robbery, or rape." She pauses, lets that one sink in. "Generally no violating anyone's mind, OK? Jesus Christ."

He glowers back at her. "So, stop using my power entirely, then. Jessica Jones only goes for normal average guys, who'd have thought?"

"You claim to know me so well--"

"--I do know you. Better than anyone."

That sends a chill up her spine. Fucking creep.

"Then you know how I feel about--moral bullshit, I don't know what to call it." She drags a hand through her hair. "Do I seem like the kind of girl who would want to hang around someone who tells strangers to throw scalding coffee into their own eyes?

He flinches, but she knows better than to think he's ashamed. "You saw that."

"I've seen a lot of what you do. You're not actually invisible, you know. Even if you like to whisper 'I was never here' and swoosh out like fucking Dracula, security cameras don't lie, and you can't erase all of them." She glares at him in the rear-view mirror. "You've done a really great job of making me hate you."

"I can see that too."

#

Boston is a bust, but they stumble into a bank robbery and it takes minimal prodding to convince Kilgrave to subdue the gunmen with a blasé "for God's sake, put down the rifles. What are we, animals that need tranquilizer darts? In fact, get down on the floor and go to sleep until the authorities arrive, there's a good scumbag. Honestly."

"Still enjoying playing the hero?" she asks as they wait for the police.

"Just now, absolutely. I don't like guns," he explains, turning up the collar of his stupid fancy coat against the chill. "They lack finesse."

She considers this. "Those home security guys of yours looked pretty tricked-out."

His glare is withering, obviously. "Those are professionals, Jessica. There is a reason I use trained personnel and not your average Joe off the street to wield a weapon. Far too dangerous. People like that can't be trusted with that much power."

She scoffs at him. "Says the mind-controller," but lets the subject drop.

*

They're in Maine three days later, fresh off trying to get a confession out of a suspected serial killer (suspected but not guilty, it turned out) and both their nerves are ragged. She sleeps in fits and starts, walking her motel room from end to end far into the night, until eventually Kilgrave texts her:

_You're safe to go to sleep Jessie, I'm not going anywhere._

She suspects he knows why that was comforting--you don't have to worry about anyone else, I'm right here, not hurting anybody--so maybe he's not as stupid as she imagines.

They get back on the road in the morning. She doesn't want to stay any place more than a couple of days; for this to work, they need to be fixing shit all over the country.

The silence in the car is calming, rain on the windshield soaking up the tension between them, until she breaks the quiet.

She makes the mistake of bringing up a new rule concerning the compulsion power, because it's been on her mind, and watches his face fall. Kilgrave looks murderous, but he can't say no, not to her, not without spoiling their bargain.

"But I haven't been using it at all," he protests.

"You're not using it on me, that's not the same thing as not using it at all." She pauses, wondering how to go about this. She can't tell him to cut it out cold turkey, he'll never agree to that, and frankly she's seen him use it a lot by accident over the last few days. "You get one daily. And you have to run it by me first, in case it's tangentially evil or something."

"Three," he counters. "More in an emergency."

"This is not a negotiation."

He huffs annoyance. "I've been compelling people by habit for the last thirty years of my life, how well do you imagine this is going to work if I suddenly decide to stop?"

"Badly," she answers, automatically enough that it could be against her will. She follows it up with a glare.

"You see? I'm likely to slip up. Three a day. Come on, Jessica, be reasonable."

She is reasonable, it's the rest of the world that's fucking crazy.

"What counts as an emergency?"

"You're in danger, or I'm in danger, or one of these helpless people you want me to assist is in danger. Or," his voice picks up, "or we're not explicitly in danger but what about when we get caught on security footage? Can't have our secret identities blown."

We don't have secret identities, she thinks: we barely even have identities.

They argue for another twenty minutes, in the time it takes to cross back in to New York state, and eventually she acquieses to three relatively harmless compullsions per day. She does not mention this in her daily email to Trish; it's the first time she's censored something, but it won't be the last.

#

In Pennsylvania, they realize they're being followed.

The man identifies himself as a member of something called SHIELD, and Jessica panics, okay? She's not proud of it, and later she will feel like shit for it, but in that moment she panics, and she reaches out blindly and grasps Kilgrave by his wrist, pulls him bodily in front of her.

"Do something," she orders, but what she means is _do your thing._

The fear must show in her voice because he reacts immediately instead of taunting her the way she expects; there's no drawn-out banter over what he should do to make this problem disappear, no teasing, and no comments on the fact that she voluntarily touched his skin with her own. Instead he turns a level glare on the man, and says in a firm, commanding tone, "You never saw us. You went looking but we weren't here. You found a couple you thought might be the people you were looking for, but you're mistaken."

There's a sickening minute where the man doesn't react, eyes dead behind his sunglasses, but then he repeats "I'm mistaken," and Jessica exhales. They watch him walk away and then high-tail it back to the rental car.

"Are you all right, darling?" Kilgrave asks, smirking.

She punches him in the shoulder. "Don't call me that."

He smirks. "You're fine. Right, let's get going, this rash of random stabbings isn't going to resolve itself. Let's go save some internal organs."

#

So they work well together, that doesn't mean they're not going to fight:

In Portland, they go to a farmer's market (oh, sure, why the hell not? They need to get food somewhere, it's a long drive to Minneapolis); they end up sniping at each other all day, and finally blow up over a parking ticket on the hood of the newest rental car. She tells him to stop being such a prick, and he tells her that he has, he's been so good for her, played by her nonsense rules, even though he "would really like to instruct that parking officer to go play in traffic, but I think you'd object--"

"--Aww, you _are_ learning," she says sunnily, sneering.

"--so perhaps I'll tell him he doesn't want to write us a parking ticket after all. Does that meet with your approval?"

She shrugs. "Your last freebie for the day, use it or lose it."

He throws his hands up (drama queen) and stalks over to the traffic cop; they're back on the road in ten minutes, and he's in a much better mood.

"We make a good team, Jessie," he comments.

She looks at him squarely for the first time in a hundred and sixty miles. "Don't call me that."

"Why?"

Oh, god damn him.

"The only person who calls me that now is Trish's mother, who is an abusive sack of shit. If you want me to associate you with being an abusive sack of shit, by all means, continue using nickname I am predisposed to hating."

He calls her "Jessica" from then on, and she finds it a lot less annoying.

Should she be worried that he's not really that annoying anymore?

#

"What happens when it wears off?" he asks outside a Starbucks in New Mexico.

They're sitting on the patio, enjoying a scenic view of a strip-mall parking lot. It's sunny out, the kind of pure brilliant brightness she didn't see a lot of in Hell's Kitchen. He's got on the sunglasses he bought at the Nordstrom while she was in Barnes & Noble updating their trunk-size self-help library ('So You Have Narcissistic Personality Disorder'--he'd read the title and said, "Which one of us is that for?"); she can't make out his expression behind them.

She says "huh?" like she doesn't know what he's talking about.

He scoffs at her. "Don't play dumb, Jessica. You know it doesn't last forever." "

"I suspected," she says around the straw in her Iced Lemonade. "I didn't know for sure. You never gave me much of a chance to find out. It doesn't just wear off all at once."

He ignores that, looks troubled.

It doesn't hurt her to talk about it, not anymore. She'll still tell him to shut up, sometimes, if he feels the need to bring up that afternoon they spent at the MoMA or that he knows what her favourite colour is (because he made her tell her). She'll push back, when he shoves their shared past at her, but it doesn't seem so recent, so gruesome.

It's because it happened to some other version of her, who feels so far away now. The Jessica who got taken in by Kilgrave the mind-control man had a crappy office job, a room in her best friend's apartment, and dreams of saving the world. The Jessica she is now lives on the road with her fucked-up albatross of a nemesis, and she actually does save the world. It's a trade off. It's like being a different person.

She should feel more conflicted about it, but she's never had much time for all that therapy bullshit anyway.

"So while it does wear away, what happens to all those people I told to fuck off? I know the ones in prison are secure, but I mean the others." Justice doesn't always mean jail time; she would know. "They'll just wake up one day and realize they can go back to their lives of crime, not having learned anything?"

"Does that bother you?"

He flashes her a grin, perfect false bravado. "Of course not. But I'm surprised it doesn't bother you."

#

Six months comes and goes and neither of them comments on it.

Spring bleeds into summer and it's hot, abruptly, and they're in Baja California and Kilgrave has just finished instructing the members of a human trafficking ring on the specifics of turning themselves over to the authorities, and Jessica has bloody knuckles and a split lip and her heart is beating so fast. They got here on a motorcycle he "bought" off a man in Tijuana (telling him "You'd rather walk" while Jessica shoved a wad of fifties into his coat pocket), and they're watching the disgusting turds of humanity they just triumphed over march right into the police station. They'll stay here overnight, make sure everything's wrapped up with a bow, but beyond that they've got no plan, no real leads except the hearsay he picks up on the Internet and the tabloid articles she grabs in the supermarket. Their new hobby is looking for other people like them.

She looks at him and says "Alaska?"

He looks back at her and says, "Why not?" and a week later they're in Juneau, hunting down the rumours of a man who can fly. They don't find him, but it turns out Kilgrave knows how to fish, and they spend another week in a rented little cabin, more or less camping by the ocean. She only threatens to kill him twice. It's her first real vacation ever.

#

The next time they're saving a helpless bystander and someone demands to know who they are, she has an answer ready. She's been thinking, and there's really only one way to get the right kind of media attention.

His name has to be the same for this to work, but she could be anyone. She thinks about the ridiculous costume Trish had made, and had bundled into her arms the night she left New York.

The scumbag who's been trying to kick her in the ribs gets taken out with a punch to the throat, and the police chief he was holding hostage looks up at her with wide eyes and asks "who are you people?"

"I'm Jewel, that's Kilgrave, and we're here to save the day."

After the debriefing with the police force, where he politely insists nobody follow them but allows the cops to retain their memories, Kilgrave looms over her shoulder and whispers, "Jewel," into her ear, and she can hear the shit-eating grin on his face.

She shoves him lightly back toward the rental car. "Shut the fuck up, Kevin."

#

In Nebraska, he shows her how to change a flat tire, though fuck knows where he learned that.

In Ohio, she sleeps six straight hours without a single nightmare.

In Washington, they get into a screaming fight.

She's not entirely sure how it starts, but it ends with her throwing a roadmap in his face, and him screaming in her face and that's too familiar, too much like his tantrums when he had her captive--only now she doesn't have to be afraid of him. She reacts on instinct: she punches him in the face..

He goes down like a sack of bricks, sinking to his knees in the parking lot of the 7/11, clutching his jaw.

"God, you're a bitch," he whines.

"And you're a fucking child," she shoots back, stalking inside. When she comes back with her Slurpee and a new road map of the state they're actually in (oh, maybe that was how the fight started?) he and the car are gone.

Seeing no other options, she walks the six miles back to their middle-of-nowhere hotel overlooking the interstate.

By nightfall he's returned, shamefaced, with a bottle of tequila, held out like a peace offering.

"What," she asks, not moving out of the doorway. He can say what he needs to say from the hallway.

"You know how I feel about you," he says, and she blinks away the reflexive eye-roll.

Not this _love_ bullshit again. She's honestly so used to tuning it out that she's stopped contradicting him.

"I almost have to wonder, would I have learned it faster--learned this 'respecting humanity' thing of yours, if I'd let you have your own mind, when I had you with me the first time?"

She snorts, because that's such garbage. "You'd have killed me, for making you feel more human. And if I'd had my own mind then, I'd have managed to kill you."

"But you won't now. Why is that, Jessica? It's driving me insane. You say you'll never feel anything for me besides hatred, and, well, I suppose there's nothing I can do about that. I can still see you protected and cared for, and I know the things we do together make you happy. You like helping people."

She does. It makes her feel like there's maybe a reason for being alive, and frankly sometimes she needs a reason.

"Consider it my cheat for the rest of time. Why haven't you killed me?"

"I can't kill you," she says. "I don't want to kill anyone ever again, I'd rather die."

He sighs. "You were much less dramatic, last time."

She can't let that pass. "You didn't see anything real of me 'last time,' you saw a--an empty-headed doll with my face and my name."

"I know."

"You don't, though."

"I know that too."

She moves to slam the door in his face and stops short when his hand flies into the jab, gripping and holding it open.

"I'm sorry, Jessica," he says slowly. "I shouldn't have spoken to you that way, earlier. I won't do it again."

She shuts the door softly, thinking, _why didn't I break his fingers?_ But somehow the idea of hurting him like that causes a wave of revulsion to rise over her. She'll punch him again if she has to, but she's not playing dirty.

She drinks the tequila slowly and doesn't sleep that night. In the morning she pours the rest of the bottle down the toilet, and after that she stops drinking entirely.

He never comments on it.

#

In Wisconsin, land of dairy-related crimes, she tells him the bottom line of her gambit, the whole reason she agreed to leave with him: "I figured it couldn't be worse than being afraid. If you stop being obsessed with me, you've got no reason to try to ruin my life. If you keep on being obsessed with me, we'll just keep doing what we're doing."

"What, saving kittens from trees and all that? Fuck me, what've I agreed to?"

She lets out a short, sharp laugh at that, and they both look a little startled.

#

In Montreal, the mayor thanks them for evacuating the hospital in the nick of time. They're standing on a podium, and she's got the Jewel mask on. Camera flashes go off in their faces.

Kilgrave tells her quietly, "You're smiling."

Jessica whispers out the side of her mouth, "People do that on their own sometimes."

#

In Montana, they have to share a bed. It's so pathetic, it's almost comical.

They've been driving all day and spent most of last night in a parking lot outside an all-night diner in Missoula, waiting for an arsonist to get off work. After that close call a couple weeks ago Jessica decided they couldn't keep marching in to places and ordering people to right their wrongs, so they've been reduced to waiting patiently. Kilgrave is awful at patience, and she's not so good at it herself.

That case is all wrapped up nicely–she calls them "cases" in the emails she sends to Trish, instead of "we just drive around looking for trouble basically"–and the cop booking the man into custody was kind enough to point them toward a similar case in Los Angeles. Apparently someone is setting hospices on fire. Kilgrave started booking airline tickets on his phone before the man had even finished speaking.

Neight of them considered the snowstorm sweeping down from the Arctic and grounding every flight for hours. They spend most of the next day trapped in a crowded airport, and Jessica gets fed up after the third flight delay and shrieks at the airline agent until she offers to comp them a room at the airport Hilton. It's two  in the morning and she's exhausted, but she's told Kilgrave he only gets one cheat today and he used it twenty minutes ago to get them this table in the hotel bar.

The concierge finally calls out, over the heads of three dozen other disgruntled travellers, "Jones and Thompson? We have your room ready."

Jessica hurries over, so excited to sleep she barely notices the problem.

"Rooms, surely," Kilgrave corrects, looming over her shoulder.

"Um, no, just the one room's available. I'm so sorry, I thought you were both--I mean, your tickets are on the same credit card, so the airline rep only asked for one room."

Shit, Jessica thinks.

"It's our last available room," the clerk tells them, clearly embarrassed at having read the situation wrong.

They've already turned in the rental car, so she can't make him sleep in it or take it herself, and she's so tired, she's dangerously close to letting him have another cheat. They both need rest, and he's as dead on his feet as she is.

"We'll take it," she tells the desk clerk.

They take the elevator up to the sixth floor in silence. There's such familiarity in standing just behind him as he unlocks the door and flicks on all the lights that reality wavers for a sick moment and she has to grip the doorframe to keep upright.

He goes about his business as if she isn't there, though he showers with the bathroom door shut and emerges dressed in sweatpants and t-shirt. He used to walk around naked all the time, before, and she'd probably kill him if he tried that now. She doesn't bother changing, just takes off her jeans and crawls under the covers. Their flight to LA is in seven hours, and she's been awake for thirty-five.

He flicks off the overhead light, lays down on top of the covers across the bed from her, and sighs deeply.

"What," she demands into the dark.

"Nothing. Go to sleep, Jessica."

She sits up in bed, furious, and reaches for the nightstand light.

"No, hold on, that wasn't--I wasn't trying to make you sleep, I just don't have anything good to say right now," he insists, and he sounds so drained and lifeless that she chooses to believe it. She leaves the light off and slumps back against the pillows.

"If you've got something to say then say it."

"You'll think it's stupid."

"I already do."

He's quiet a moment longer, then says, "When we shared a bed again, I didn't want it to be like this," he tells her in the dark. "I wanted it to be something you chose. Not--circumstances, forcing you to be near me. That's beneath us. I'm annoyed at the situation. That's all."

She listens, and she hears him, and she waits for it, but the queasy revulsion never hits her. She understands what he means. She hates these circumstances too, though their reasons are different.

"Go to sleep, Kilgrave," she says after a while.

#

She is very aware that it's messed up and twisted to feel any kind of sympathy for him. Trish sends her emails to that effect every other day, and all the psych books she's picked up to safeguard against Stockholm Syndrome reiterate it.

What does it matter that he never beat her? That he made her play out some fucked-up parody of a relationship instead of holding her down and taking what he wanted? She still never got a say in what they did, when they did it, where they did it–but he always prefaced it with "You'll like this," and she had. For all that she knows she hates him, she's always hated him, he told her she loved him and it feels like she did, once. That's what makes him so dangerous. That's what makes this thing between them hurt,

What does it matter now? What was gentleness in his mind was pure violation over hers, and hers is the one she was to live with. He forced her, they both know it, and she's not stupid enough to think he regrets it.

But the desperation in his tone catches her by surprise, and for a moment she's back at the Savoy, beneath him on silk sheets, his eyes boring down into her like he was trying to read her soul.

"You love this, tell me," he'd said against her throat, "let yourself enjoy it, and tell me what you want."

"I love it," she'd repeated, voice ragged with rage and pleasure she'd tried to repress. Then: "Harder. I won't break."

#

In Vegas, a year in to their partnership, she takes the tracking chip out of her wallet, and cuts the one she's not supposed to know about out of her hoodie, leaves it in a taxi on their way out of town.

She's not sure what she's doing anymore–she hasn't replied to Trish's last three emails, and she knows it's only a matter of time before someone tells her this has gone on long enough, she's not going to rehabilitate the monster. She knows that, but she still lets him use his daily cheat to get them free tickets to an MMA finals fight after he catches her staring mesmerized at the promo screens on the Strip, and she finds herself leaning against him in the crush of the crowd, screaming encouragements at the spectacle in the ring.

If she turns around, she'll see how happy he looks, so she doesn't turn around.

It's not always doom and gloom, this hero thing.

 #

They have nothing in common.

"Sure we do," Kilgrave insists, "I like food, you like food. I like music, you like music."

He likes Vivaldi and David Bowie and Coldplay; he _would_.

She tells him, "You have to know that none of the things we spent time on back then were my choice. I don't give a shit about opera or Thai cuisine or rugby."

He says, "Well, I wouldn't expect you to appreciate everything I like, that's just unreasonable."

She thinks of nights spent across the table from him in five-star restaurants, and remembers that it wasn't the food she objected to. "And you're the king of 'reasonable,'" she mutters, switching gears. They're going to Chicago, where there is a man who can set things on fire with his mind, according to "News of the World."

"You don't understand what I see in you," Kilgrave comments idly.

She doesn't stop the car in traffic, but it's a near thing.

"Don't misunderstand me, I'm not questioning your many attractions. You just don't seem to realize how compatible we are. I wasn't sure the whole world wasn't just a delusion I had invented to entertain myself, until I met you. You're a revelation. I'm sorry, am I making you uncomfortable?"

"What."

Did he really just ask her that?

"You're very quiet. What's your opinion on all this?"

She clears her throat. She has to say something, or he'll know his power doesn't work on her anymore.

"Look, if it's the strength thing, I'm sure there are many women out there in the world who could kick your ass."

He laughs, the bastard.

#

Sometimes, she'll pick up a guy in a bar. Just for the hell of it. She never brings them back to the posh hotels Kilgrave chooses, her life is too complicated to explain, and she's not going to screw some stranger on the road, but a girl needs a little action now and then. She needs all the endorphins she can get, now that her life is a travelling shitshow, and it's worth it to see the look on Kilgrave's face.

It only gets weird when he starts doing the same.

"You can't have seriously expected me to remain celibate for the rest of my life," he points out. They're in the kind of classy, snobby wine bar he tries and only sometimes succeeds in talking her into entering, and technically they're here searching out intel on a high-level mob boss.

"If you coerce any of these women in any way," she tells him, "I will know, and I will cut your balls off."

The only way she's going to be satisfied is if she can personally ensure he's not being an evil prick again, which is how she ends up sitting across from the woman Kilgrave is chatting up--Kelly or Kimmy or something--and listening to him explain that he is a recovering alcoholic, and Jessica is his sober companion, who must accompany him everywhere to prevent a relapse.

"Like that show," Karly or whatever says, "the Lucy Liu TV show. Oh, man, that's unreal. Do you guys solve mysteries too?"

Jessica has never wanted to hurt him more.

Forty-five minutes in to being painfully charming, he dismisses the woman, and Jessica can't look too closely at the relief that floods her veins.

He smiles at her over a plate of canapés, pops a crab puff into his mouth, and says, "You know you're the only one for me."

"I hate you," she says, but the fire behind it's fizzled out. She says it too often for any real passion to bleed through.

#

Their fame grows, through the right channels, and she starts getting emails from Quito, from Melbourne, from St. Petersburg. No more chasing down random leads. Cases are coming to them.

#

They infiltrate a drug cartel in Brasilia, swiftly deliver justice in the form of Kilgrave ordering a confession from the head honcho, and then celebrate by going dancing. She hasn't been dancing in years--the last time was probably with him, actually, and she's not going to think about that--and on the way back to the hotel she stumbles in her high heels and grips his arm for balance. Then she stops walking entirely and tugs at him to stand still, and just looks at him for a moment.

She knows how they look together, in the media pictures. A lot of people assume they're a couple. They don't give interviews, don't talk to the press, but she sees the pictures on the Internet and knows what everyone thinks. He's the right height for her, the right age, the right build. If he had stopped her on the street and asked her out for coffee, instead of kidnapping her, she would have considered it.

These are the things she thinks about. She doesn't know if this is his fault or hers.

The thing is, when he talks about them being compatible, about them belonging together, she's not sure he's _wrong_. Because she's never felt like she belonged anywhere in her entire life like she does on the road with him, helping people, fighting bad guys, being a force for good.

She's Jessica Jones, AKA Jewel, and he's Kilgrave.

He's Kilgrave. He can't tell her what to do. He wants her, he'll always want her, and there's something sick and delightful about the way he looks at her, like he'll never get enough of her, even when she's mean to him. Even when he's snide back at her. He always has that look, like she's the most important person in the world, because she is, to him.

God, the way he _looks_ at her.

#

She's never been to Europe before.

They spend thirty-six hours in London, but he's skittish and shaky the entire time, and in the end she asks if they can leave for Paris early. The case isn't for them anyway, it's nothing Scotland Yard can't handle, but she thinks maybe they wanted a Superhero name attached. They're going to have to be more discerning about which cases they work on, now they're spoiled for choice.

They're not the Avengers or the Fantastic Four or even that wacko out in Latveria, but they're getting better known. Kilgrave can't wear purple in public anymore, though he rebelliously keeps his coat lining a deep lavender colour. There is a Twitter dedicated to posting sightings of them, the @KillJewel_Spotted account. They get the odd email from SHIELD, overly solicitous, but haven't seen any more agents in person; Jeri Hogarth keeps forwarding her the kind of insanely rich clients she would have killed for when she was a proper PI.

Their names and actions are out there, in the world, more or less. She just hopes it's enough.

#

In Cannes, Kilgrave gets stabbed.

She's heard people say that time can slow down, and maybe that's true:

The car accident that took her family from her. The expression on Trish's face when she found Jessica in the bathroom holding a three hundred pound chunk of marble over her head. Kilgrave meeting her eyes across the distance when he came back for her in New York. Those moments all lasted a little longer than they should have, reality stretched thin with tension and terror.

This? This was the opposite. Everything sped up.

They had been walking to lunch, a place near the waterfront he'd looked up online that had good reviews, when they turned a corner and there was a bus crash. Flames, twisted metal, total disaster. These were the sorts of things they stumbled upon, these days.

He was right beside her, running toward the crash (a tour bus smashed into newsstand, no one obviously hurt but a lot of ominous screaming), mouth set in a firm line--and then a man stepped out from the solemn crowd gathering around the bus and drew a long blade from inside heis jacket, and he _put it into Kilgrave's chest._

She was aware of the noise, of traffic sounds rising in a crescendo around her, car horns and then sirens, shouts from bystanders. She saw and heard Kilgrave say, "Jessica, get away," and then something about running, but the next thing she knew he was on the ground, violet-dark blood staining his sweater, and she was standing over the stabber, pummelling him, just letting him have it--

Someone pulled her off. Probably several people. They'd been recognized.

There were paramedics arriving on the scene for the crash victims, but someone had got their attention and then there a voice said "he's still breathing," and Kilgrave was being loaded into an ambulance, and time slowed down long enough for her to puke into the gutter before climbing in alongside him.

#

There's heart surgery. She doesn't think about it. She doesn't think about anything. She sends an email that says "help" and includes the address of the hospital, and keeps all her panic inside.

SHIELD sends over some kind of agent, a man she's never seen before who speaks rapidfire French and brings her coffee as she sits in the waiting room, and he must do good work, because the hospital does not ask her about insurance or identification. Immediately afterward they move to a private hospital nearer the beach, where Tony Stark's picture hangs on the wall and she's pretty sure she sees Mr Fantastic in the lobby.

It's still raining and she hasn't slept in forty-seven hours.

Kilgrave wakes up for the first time when he's being moved from gurney to bed, reaches out for her with her name on his lips.

"Go back to sleep," she tells him. "I'll be here when you wake up." Later, she would be horrified by the pleasing edge in her tone, and the raw fear in his.

#

Kilgrave makes a terrible convalescent, to nobody's surprise.

They have a floor in the small private facility outside Cannes, and the days trickle into weeks. Doctor Febine clucks at him to stay in bed, sleep as much as he can, drink fluids, stop tearing at the IV line in his arm. The surgery went well, but being an invalid is difficult for him, and he heals in fits and starts.

She stays close, sleeps when he sleeps, has the nurses firmly instructed to wake her up when he wakes up.

They all think she's head over heels for him, and maybe it's easy to misunderstand it that way, because the first time he wakes up she's sitting at his bedside and he asks for her before he's even fully conscious.

She takes his hand because her touch has always calmed him. She hates that she knows that, hates why she knows it, but it's true.

He's heavily sedated, and she refuses the offers of the staff to watch him while she rests separately, because if she's not at his side, who knows that he'll tell these people to do when he wakes up? He's creative at the best of times, sadistic at the worst. He'll tell the night nurse to go strangle herself with his IV line if she's not careful.

It doesn't come to that. Drugged up Kilgrave is more interested in questions:

"Who stabbed me?"

She tells him, "A crazy person, a superhero fanatic."

That gets her a grin, followed immediately by a deflection that they're not superheroes. They're much cooler than that. He gazes around the dimly lit room.

"Did I pay for this with money? I think I did, you like it when I pay for things instead of taking. You're very fair."

She assures him that everything is taken care of, and he just needs to rest.

"Jessica, do you still hate me?"

She won't answer that, but reaches up to lower the window shades. He'll sleep better in the dark.

"If you killed me, I wouldn't mind that."

Her hands still, lower onto the blankets. "Don't say shit like that, you're not suicidal."

Kilgrave grips her wrist between his thumb and forefinger, right over her pulse. "You understand what I mean. You always do."

After that, she tells the doctors no more painkillers. He'd rather be awake and in agony than speaking to them, to her, while loopy beyond words.

#

Their first conversation after he's off the drugs is subdued. It's as if he's attempting to make up for every weak moment of neediness by being surly and stoic.

He finishes the soup and slides the hospital tray back along the nightstand, says:

"This changes everything, you realize."

She's not sure if he's still a little high, so she ignores the nervous catch in his tone. "What, having you laid up for a few weeks? Don't sweat it, the world isn't gonna implode just because we take a rest break. I've got the internet spreading rumours."

She might have been seeding the JewelKilgrave Tumblr with false reports of sightings in Australia.

But he doesn't mean that at all.

"I told you to run. I saw the blade appear and I shouted for you. You heard me, I know you heard me, but you stayed."

Oh. Shit. He's finally figured it out.

"Jessica, how long have you been lying to me?"

He says it casually, and she has no intention of answering that.

"I can't make you talk to me," he says wearily. "But I have to know. When did you realize?"

The response is dragged from her slowly, because she knows she has to say it or else they'll sit here in silence forever. "The day you brought me to my house. I was freaked out and you––saw, like you always did, and you told me to calm down and it didn't work. It had always worked before that."

"Oh."

"When did you figure it out?" she asks lamely.

"Last July," he rasps, clearing his throat. "That bombing plot in Panama, we had that argument and I asked you to tell me what you wanted, and you said 'to catch a fucking break' and then went off on your own. I wasn't speaking broadly; you should have said what you wanted in that exact moment. You should have had to."

She hadn't even noticed.

"I tested it, a few times. Wait, hurry up, repeat that. Little things that should have caused specific reactions, but you got around them. No one's ever done that before. I realized I would have to be on my guard, make sure I never spoke even an indirect command to you."

"You were careful," she agrees. It feels like faint praise. "You hardly ever slip up anymore."

The silence in the room is thick, heavy with the sound of rain pinging the windows.

"To be perfectly honest, I was hoping you'd never find out," Kilgrave admits, after a long beat.

Funny, she'd just been thinking the same thing

He continues: "I thought if I kept you with me, I could convince you we should be together like we were before. But I didn't realize until that--that ruffian--slid his machete under my ribs, that I don't want to go back to the way things were." He makes to sit up in the hospital bed, struggling slightly against the inclined pillows behind his back. "I couldn't, you see. I thought I'd seen the world, swanning about on my own, spending other people's money, living in their houses, but really I'd seen a small fragment of it. The real world is with you, Jessica. It's exhausting, and dirty, and you are maddening--but god help me, I like it. I like being hailed as a hero. Oh, the rush of it, the adrenaline, and the look on your face when a harrowing situation is all resolved nicely--I live for those looks from you." He pauses, swallows. "I knew it from the moment I first saw you, that you would change my life. But I misunderstood. I didn't know then that I would have to change with it."

His little monologue has drained him, left pinpoints of colour on his high cheekbones, and he sags against the pillows.

"You haven't changed," she insists. "Not for real. You're only doing what you think I want you to do. You still don't give a shit about right from wrong."

"No, but I'm hoping to, one day," he admits. "And I'm making a good charade of it in the meantime. What's that they say, 'fake it till you make it?'"

She could kill him. She sits down on the bed beside him, lets him take one of her hands between both of his.

"Jessica Jones," he says sternly, softly, thumb on her pulse, "What have you been playing at?"

She doesn't know when she started crying, or why she's doing it. She's not afraid of him, not anymore. She's not worried or upset, he'll be fine (though there was a moment in the ambulance where she thought "what if he's not fine" that she has no clue what to make of). She's not worried for herself either.

"What happens now?" she repeats.

Now they save the world. It needs a lot of help, and they are there to help.

#

When he's recovered, when they leave the seaside and venture inland on the trail of a kidnapped heiress (one of Jeri Hogarth's Heroism for Hire clients, but Jessica likes earning honest money, and the work is easy), they have time to fight. They fight about the stabbing and make up over it at the same time--

"You could have died, you idiot," she says, climbing into his lap and working at his shirt buttons, letting her hands trace over the angry red scar on his chest.

They had booked a train compartment to themselves, at his insistence, and now she can understand why.

"Darling girl," he tells her, rucking up the skirt he'd begged her to wear. "I'm not leaving you, no need to fret."

She shouldn't be so turned on by the voice that used to haunt her nightmares. She needs him to stop talking. She presses her fingertips over his lips, to stop the words she's heard before from spilling out, but he misunderstands and sucks them into his mouth, and oh, that's just fine too.

Her heart is pounding.

"What would you do for me, if I asked you to?" she wants to know.

A year ago, that would still have elicited a flare of temper, haughtiness or contempt, but now he knows she's not going anywhere, and he only arches beneath her. She can feel his arousal pressing against her.

"Anything," he says, eyes wide, cheeks flushed, "you know that. I already have. You only have to ask. I'm yours."

What a lot of power that is, owning another person's soul.

#

The sex is good to start with, that strange spark between them catching into roaring flames all at once, and it's better once she gets used to being in charge.

She's never been particularly bossy in bed, but there's a part of her that will always love pushing him around a little, deciding where and when and how they're going to screw. He likes it best when she'll play all coy romance--and she does, occasionally, wear a lace negligee or climb into his lap and speak lovingly, to please him, and she's stopped wondering what kind of sick fuck that makes her--but more often he'll laugh and grin and go along with whatever idea she's got into her head. They've fucked in airplane washrooms, in the back of the latest rental car, on the ground in the woods in fucking suburban Detroit on stakeout for local drug runners. They're in a phase where they can't keep their hands off each other, and she doesn't expect it to last forever. She's a little scared that it might.

"You were dead serious about killing me if this went badly, weren't you?" he asks her one night in their Airbnb in Portugal. The humidity makes everything feel sticky in a way she just can't get used to, and they've had to kick off all the bedsheets to keep from overheating in a post-coital haze, but still he picks up her sweaty hand and brushes a featherlight kiss across her knuckles.

"Still am," she admits. It won't make a difference to him.

She's under no illusions. This is not a different man from the one who kept her captive for half a year. Yeah, maybe he regrets it now, but she'll never really be sure what's going on in his head.

She decides when and how and why he gets to touch her, and she fucking enjoys it when he does. She's left shame behind two thousand miles ago.

#

Trish finds them in Shanghai, and Jessica can only think "of course, of course she's here. I ran away and she needs to make sure I'm OK and drag me back to reality."

Trish knocks on the door of their suite on the nineteenth floor and stops short at the sight of Kilgrave, in a grey suit and pale violet tie, reading the case file their latest client has put together. Jessica had been finishing up an email to their contact at SHIELD, letting her know the Latveria situation is resolved. They had been discussing where to go for breakfast.

Trish looks like she just stumbled access a murder scene.

"I'm not under his control, Trish," Jessica tells her, preemptive.

Trish envelops her in one of those warm, crushing, vaguely vanilla-y hugs she doles out to friends and family like candy, and says, "How am I supposed to believe that?" She pulls away and says, "You left with him. You're here with him."

"Would you believe I'm immune."

She does not believe it, and Jessica cocks her head at Kilgrave in a 'get the fuck over here' motion while she says, "look, I can prove it."

He comes over and stands just slightly behind her, facing Trish while he speaks but clearly addressing Jessica.

"What would you have me do?"

"Tell me to sit down."

He repeats the order flatly, and she forgets their audience and rolls her eyes reflexively. "Say it like you mean it, fuckwad."

He says, "Sit down, Jessica." Then, in that same shrill, commanding tone she remembers from the night that city bus had freed her from his control forever, adds, "Now, Jessica."

She remains standing, says to Trish, "you see?"

Trish is unconvinced, sweeping her gaze back and forth between the two of them so critically that Jessica is momentarily convinced she's been caught out. She stamps down the fear that spikes through her; she's done nothing wrong, so what's there to be afraid of?

"Did you cure him?" she finally asks of Jessica.

"No. Kilgrave," she turns to face him, "help me out here."

He's got that look on his face that means he wants to strangle himself with his necktie, but he only says, "Patricia, clap your hands twice."

Trish does it, and looks down at her hands like they've betrayed her.

Kilgrave clearly has more self-preservation instinct than she's been led to expect, because he only says "I'll be heading back to my room, then," and puts his shoes back on and leaves.

He doesn't have a room, but Trish won't have checked on that.

Jessica has always deflected by rambling, and she starts asking questions. Trish tells her what a farce Hope's trial eventually turned out to be.

Everyone knows there's a man called Kilgrave who sweeps in to harrowing situations and saves the day by overriding humanity's shitty impulses to violence and terror. He's a ghost, a sauve hostage negotiator and hypnotist (mind control isn't _real_ ), and the kind of de-escalation expert the FBI would kill to get their hands on. He's a resource for good, and mostly he works with Jewel, the super-strength wielding warrior girl.

Trish explains all this with the air of someone who has tried very hard not to go mad while hearing all these things the first time around; her smile is brittle at the edges.

"All of New York is on the lookout for this Kilgrave Copycat who abducts young women and forces them to murder their parents. Hope will have therapy every day for probably the rest of her life, but she's not in prison."

Of course Jessica had kept up with the headlines. Of course she did, when this was her design all along. Kilgrave is known to the world at large, (in a manner of speaking), and his victims aren't going to be held accountable. She's never been one for false modesty, she knows she's helped a lot of people and saved a lot of lives recently, but it all started out with Hope.

Hope was the one she needed to save, and she did. She can't ask for more than that, and anything else that came her way wasn't in the plan. But she'll take it.

"How did you find me?" she asks, out of plain curiosity.

Trish, deadpan as ever, says: "Would you believe I hired a PI?"

She does believe it, actually, and it sets them both off laughing in a way she never expected to be able to laugh with Trish again.

They spend the morning talking, talking about everything--Trish's show, her new TV deal, Jessica's carefully orchestrated publicity, the places she's seen in the last few years. They talk about missing each other, about Hope's new barista job and the Times columnist Trish has been dating.

The only things they don't discuss are the things Jessica can't make herself talk about: the shadow at her side through every one of those adventures, the last-minute save when her strength isn't enough to win the day, the reason she left New York in the first place. The man who destroyed her life.

Eventually the strain of talking around him breaks on Trish, and she says solemnly, "You look good, Jessica. I thought I was going to march in here and rescue you from a monster. What in the hell is going on?"

Does she look good? It's nice to hear. Kilgrave tells her near daily that she's ravishing, a vision of loveliness, gorgeous beyond words, but he's a nightmare and she never takes him seriously. He also tells her that he's thought of a new career for them–continually threatening boredom with their joint heroism gig–and that instead they should be stage magicians, video game designers, dedicated socialites.

"Run away with me, Jessica Jones," he says, sometimes smiling, sometimes terrifyingly serious, and she fears that one day she might say yes. But hasn't she already said yes?

Trish means the clothes, though. Her friend is incredibly cerebral but also reassuringly shallow at times, and Jessica's whole Jewel Off Duty "look" is a lot different from her PI ensemble. It's a consequence of being back in the world, among people. When she was drunk off her ass most of the day and stalking around Hell's Kitchen after dark it didn't matter that she was wearing yesterday's t-shirt and hadn't had a haircut in a year.

She got her first post-New York haircut in Sweden, after she let Kilgrave drag her to a museum on a day off and she caught sight of their reflections in a spiralled mirrored sculpture; he was polished, worldly and commanding, and she looked like a charity case. She disappeared that evening with a picture on her phone and a translation app, and met him the next morning with three inches trimmed and fresh highlights. He offered to buy her a new perfume and she told him not to be an idiot.

She wasn't playing dress-up for him; it just felt good to take care of herself again. In Paris, the morning before the stabbing, she bought a scarlet skirt suit at the Galleries Lafayette, thinking it would be good for their next inevitable media appearance.

The next evening she was slumped in the back of an ambulance, and she spent the rest of his recuperation in sweats and ratty t-shirts, watching the roiling ocean from their suite, feeling like the world was ending. She was wrong, of course; it was only beginning again.

"What if this is what he wants?" Trish asks, shaking her back to the present. "What if you're just playing into his plan, and he's going to use you to take over the world."

Jessica finds herself shaking her head automatically. It feels strange to disagree, to defend him--and the thing is, she can't defend him or any of the things he's done, but she knows that it's all changed. They do good, and what they have is--

Well. They have it. She can't say if it's good or not, she's given up on moral judgements that don't fall into clean good-vs-evil sides.

"He wasn't ever a world domination villain anyway. And all he wants is me."

#

He has her, now, more than he ever did before. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Jessica and Kilgrave go on a roadtrip as a superhero duo; it's all part of Jessica's plan to expose Kilgrave's ability, but at the same time she gets used to him / probably develops some kind of self-aware Stockholm Syndrome, and they end up in a "we're both very fucked up" life partnership. It's dark and terrible and there are light fluffy parts because that's how life works; dark terrible things happen in spite of light fluffy moments.


End file.
